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Technologies that represent --- WASTE

sdv (non-human)

21:38 / 07.12.05

Often people ask what is the current defining technology of the present, a few years ago it was 'information technology', 'the information society' , some technoscientists and the usual running dogs - pronounced it was going to be 'genetics' and/or 'nanotechnology' -- however this is nonsense.

In this society the defining commodity and the primary consequence of the increasing liquidity, the power of the spectacle (aka primative accumulation) - is waste.... not just the waste produced to support the mass-consumption that marks those of us who live deep within the western societies but the wasted lives that support the fluidity and ever-increasing hybridisation of the cultures we are exist in. ...waste....

So philosophically and culturally - what might be better than waste ?

00:30 / 08.12.05

Not sure if this addresses the topic, but Don Delillo's sprawling and badly-in-need-of-an-editor (IMO) novel Underworld, also suggests that waste, garbage, is the defining characteristic of post-modern culture.)

07:57 / 08.12.05

SDV, can you explain this a little further please?

Personally I feel that a lot more needs to be done to change the public's perception of the amount of waste they produce. It's starting to happen but slowly, far too slowly. Waste management needs to be much more than simply finding new places to bury the stuff. We need to invest heavily in new ways of recycling the rubbish we produce. Companies need to be forced to minimise packaging.

It's vital to recognise that our lives produce vast quantities of useless crap that clogs up the environment. The more people that realise the problem and actively do something about it, the less waste will be produced hopefully.

Local governments can be a big part of turning people around to this way of thought. I'm ashamed to say that my recycling was almost non-existent until I moved to my current location. The local council actually provides us with two bins, one for regular waste and one for materials to be recycled.

Tryphena Absent

10:25 / 08.12.05

The problem is that there are so many people alive and wanting things that I don't see how we can avoid waste without governance to reduce it and as is perfectly clear the UK (and US) governments don't see waste as a particular problem.

It is a problem though- not only do the vast majority of us do work that is completely and utterly unnecessary but we also create waste consitently. I don't mean your daily rubbish but packaging for every electrical item you buy or bubble wrap or tissue paper to wrap up that cup you bought the other day. And waste isn't really something we can see, I'm using lightbulbs that consume 11 rather than 60 watts but all those extra watts are blind waste.

Waste is actually the primary reason why I can't truly bring myself to support democracy.

10:57 / 08.12.05

Waste is actually the primary reason why I can't truly bring myself to support democracy.

Is there another large-scale societal system currently in place that produces less waste? If not, what system would produce less waste?

And waste isn't really something we can see

That is the big problem isn't it? People need to be educated on good environmental behaviour from an early age in order for it to start having an impact on them. You can tell people again and again that they produce too much rubbish, but as long as they are comfortable in the here-and-now, many won't place it highly on their priorities.

Tryphena Absent

12:24 / 08.12.05

Erm... one that didn't need as many packaging companies? You know consumer competition, the cheapest way to do things, the WTO trying to stop energy labelling on products... it's not really helping our waste production.

13:17 / 08.12.05

But isn't that a by-product of capitalism rather than democracy? One doesn't necessarily follow the other does it?

Tryphena Absent

14:08 / 08.12.05

What are our democracies doing about it? Nothing much, something very very slowly. Thus it is a problem with our democracy.

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:34 / 08.12.05

Well, yes, but Russia (quasi-democratic) and China (not democratic at all) are both massive producers of both waste themselves and the products that become waste. If you mean that a one-world dictatorship would be more conducive to controlling climate change, I agree entirely, although there may be other arguments against.

nyarlathotep's shoe horn

14:55 / 08.12.05

waste. landfill. abandoned chalk mines.

the US Military is by far the world's biggest polluter (ie toxic waste among other goodies).

Urban design is finally catching up to the problem. I've noticed a number of post-secondary institutions launching urban design departments.

There are plenty of solutions. In India, there is a great recycling of, well, as much as possible as I understand it.

we have trouble with the idea of composting, let alone not chucking car batteries into the local gorge.

if we won't wake up to the problem, then how can it best be legislated? Through urban design (with public advocacy, naturally)? Through personal shifts in behaviour (ie bring your own bags, leave packaging at the store, make things yourself instead of purchasing them, don't buy disposible anything, etc...)

David Suzuki uses an old-school fountain pen that draws ink so that he doesn't have to use 101 disposible bic pens.

so, what's to be done on a societal level?

ta
tenix

sdv (non-human)

19:43 / 08.12.05

There are two types of 'waste' i am especially interested in - there is the obvious wate that is produced as a side effect of our democratic-capitalist societies - from carbon through to the other toxic wastes - however I'm equally interested in the wasted 'lives' in the attempt to enable mass-consumption to achieve ever higher levels.

The first form of 'waste' is being discussed for example in relation to carbon waste - but here the attempts to seperate the pressing issue of carbon from mass-consumption is obvious. The use of the term waste is I think useful because it refuses the absurd suggestion that a scientific and technological fix will for example enable the planet to not drown in carbon. Waste is the consequence of mass-consumption and not science and technology... (what an American might call capitalist-economics 101).

The second form is the increasing production of 'human waste' - the most obvious forms of this are the increasing populations of migrants and other outcasts - these are the inevitable result of the processes of democratic-capitalism - the consequence of modernity. With globalization and the creation of ever-larger numbers of mass-consumers more and more human waste must be constructed, more and more human beings are having the basic means of survival removed from their control, precisely in the name enabling the growth of mass-consumption.

Waste then seems to me to have two poles ---- the non-human of the first and the inhuman of the second.

I think the linking of democracy and capitalism is correct, for this is the key claim of neo-liberals - that democracy and capitalism are inextricably linked and that together they will improve things... As a side thought - when 'cheap' tourist and business plane travel is banned, or at least the traveller is forced to pay the actual carbon cost of their flight then I'll believe that democratic-capitalism has a long term future.

(I'm not sure if it's relevant but my current philosophical and cultural work revolves around what an american colleague of mine recently called a significant subset a"non-human dialectics of universal history" it doesn't quite fit either the epistemology or ontology that I've been working on over the past 3 to 4 years but it's a nice phrase and I admit that I liked the reasoning....)

sdv (non-human)

19:59 / 08.12.05

Haus,
The statement about "Russia (quasi-democratic) and China (not democratic at all)" is I think not relevant - because at present the world is in it's current state because of the West's neo-liberal demands for modernization and globalization. The western democratic-capitalist societies demanded a specific form of economic progress and have been generally successful in imposing their demands on the rest of the planet. (I'm tempted to quote Rosa Luxembourg...)

Consequently I think that both russia and china's lack of democracy is a side issue which avoids the unpleasent fact that the cause of the 'waste' (human and non-human) is mostly located in europe and north-america. China is currently developing into the production site for cheap consumptive goods - it's lack of democracy is inevitable as unionization would hardly be in the interests of western mass-consumers.

To be honest - i don't think that any concept of universal-franchise based democracy can survive the inevitable crisis of ever growing mas-consumptive 'waste'.

Haus - do you think this logic works or do you have what you think is a reasonable critique ?

07:12 / 09.12.05

The second form is the increasing production of 'human waste' - the most obvious forms of this are the increasing populations of migrants and other outcasts - these are the inevitable result of the processes of democratic-capitalism

Maybe the inevitable result of capitalism, but not necessarily the inevitable result of democracy. Can you expand on why you feel it to be so?

I should point out that I'm not particularly comfortable with the labeling of migrants as "human waste". I'm pretty sure you don't mean it to be derogatory to them, meaning rather that they have been forced into a situation where they are unable to contribute to society? Hence "waste" yes?

Consequently I think that both russia and china's lack of democracy is a side issue which avoids the unpleasent fact that the cause of the 'waste' (human and non-human) is mostly located in europe and north-america. China is currently developing into the production site for cheap consumptive goods - it's lack of democracy is inevitable as unionization would hardly be in the interests of western mass-consumers.

China is rapidly becoming a world-power economy. It's not some petty third-world dictatorship being propped up by Western interests. Plus, it's industry is far less regulated than Western ones environmentally speaking. So yes, it is relevant to a discussion on modern societal attitudes to waste.

ONLY NICE THINGS

07:32 / 09.12.05

It's less of a comnceptual locus, but it's status as a mass producer of indsustrial pollution is a biut of a factor, certainly. I take your point, though, sdv - were it not fot he desire of the Western nations for goods whihc will be manufactured in China but not consumed there, which in turn is a result of capitalism equations of labour value which make China an attractive place to buy from, then this would not be an issue.

The statement about "Russia (quasi-democratic) and China (not democratic at all)" is I think not relevant - because at present the world is in it's current state because of the West's neo-liberal demands for modernization and globalization.

So, yes and no. It's not relevant to your paradigm, but I think we need more on the interplay of capitalism, neoliberalism and democracy before we can decide whether or not democracy is an active contributor or simply a historical accident now being used by marketing.

sdv (non-human)

15:52 / 09.12.05

Evil - in no way am i being derogatory to those people that are 'waste'. They are the consequence of social and economic policies that result from this society. The use of term 'waste' is intended to identify the value that this socio-economic system assigns to the people concerned. Abstractly, looking at the way in which a vast multitude people are treated all one can see are wasted lives. It's a counterpoint to the self-congratulatory terms used to support the 'democratic-capitalist' self delusion (as if destroying the lives of a billion people to support consumption etc could ever be justified...)

Certainly China will become an even more important globalised economy (for the Chinese it always was of course), which may become a waste producer of something close to western levels by the end of the 21st century, perhaps as great as the USA (25% of the worlds waste) and Europe (not sure what the extended EU % is) are now, but this is merely to identify that China is simply irrelevant. The growing East-Asian economies are merely abused by those who wish to avoid the fact that the problem is located in the West.

nyarlathotep's shoe horn

22:34 / 12.12.05

I think that waste in terms personified by the Deadly Sin of Gluttony are at the heart of the problem.

Eat more than you need, puke it up so that no one else can eat it, and eat more than you need, etc... ad nauseum.

And of all the tons and tonnes of items that fill the land and seas and air and space, that have been discarded, considered useless, if they ever even had a use other than as a token doomed for the dump.

Cities need to compost the compostable, recycle and reuse the reusable, and negate the creation of the useless, the harmful, the unnecessary and the wasteful (arguments to define any of this can begin here).

There are web lists dedicated to trading items for free.

As it stands, anything designed for disposability should be outlawed.

if we cared enough to deal with the problem.

what about industrial waste? The Government of British Columbia are proposing to take mill waste and fertilise food crops with it.

I've read theories proposing that fluoride was added to drinking water due to the high cost of diposing of it in other ways. It hardens enamel and makes teeth grey, which dentists were happy to support.

How about Plutonium? Car Exhaust? Space Junk?

What about biological pollution? Genetically engineered organisms released into ecosystems that have never before encountered them. How can their absolute disposal be assured? It can't, despite all assurances.

And so, how do we stop?

How can sending junk mail be made a felony?

If we manage abundant sources of energy, we leave our lights on all night, computers running, chargers charging, increasing our demand for energy. If we raise prices, then fundamentals like heat and cooking appliances become prohibitively expensive for some.

what to do, what to do?

ttfn
tenix